Sebastian drained his tankard. “And none of it explains who killed the Bishop himself, or why.”
“Could have been the son, Sir Peter. He discovered his uncle killed his father for the inheritance, so he killed his uncle in revenge.”
“I don’t think so. I know Sir Peter.”
“You knew him as a boy. People change.” Gibson watched Sebastian push to his feet. “What do you plan to do next?”
“Drive out to the Grange in the morning and talk to Lady Prescott.”
“What do you think she can tell you?”
“I’m not sure. What her husband was doing down in that crypt would be a nice place to start.”
That evening, Sebastian took a copy of Aeschylus’s The Libation Bearers from his shelves and settled down to read with a brace of candles and a glass of port at his elbow.
The second in the famous Athenian playwright’s bloody trilogy on the curse of the House of Atreus, The Libation Bearers told an agonizing tale of murder and vengeance and hints of madness. But Sebastian could find nothing in that ancient Greek myth that seemed of any relevance to the death of the Bishop of London. He was halfway through the third act when Kat came to him.
Ushered into the drawing room by Morey, she brought with her the scent of beeswax and oranges and the cool air of the night. She paused just inside the door, one hand pushing back the hood of her cherry velvet cloak while she waited for the majordomo to discreetly bow himself from the room. The light from the candles gleamed over her pale cheeks and the shiny dark fall of her hair, and she was so beautiful she took his breath.
“I have an answer to your question,” she said.
The book slid to the floor as he rose to his feet. He did not step toward her. “And?”
“There has been speculation for some time that the Bishop of London hid a secret of some sort from his past. But none of the attempts by various agents to discover the nature of that secret were successful.”
Sebastian met the brilliant blue intensity of her gaze. “You’re certain?”
“Yes.” She turned to go.
He stopped her. “May I offer you something? A cup of tea? A glass of wine?” What he was really saying was, Stay.
She hesitated, a sad smile playing about her lips. “No, thank you.” You know that would not be wise.
He stared at her from across the room. Yes, you’re right. But he still couldn’t stop himself from saying, “How are you, Kat? In truth? Does Yates treat you well?”
She gave a faint shrug. “He is never anything but a gentleman. We go our own ways.”
As hard as it was for Sebastian to imagine her with another man, it was even harder for him to think of her trapped in a loveless marriage. He said, “It doesn’t sound like much of a marriage.”
“It’s the kind of marriage I want. We are friends.”
“I would like to see you happy, and in love.”
She gave a sad smile. “And you, Sebastian? Hendon is desperate for an heir.”
“I will take no woman to wife unless I can give her a whole heart.” Or unless I must, he thought, to preserve her honor.
She nodded, and drew her hood back up over her hair.
“Thank you,” he said with a painful formality that hurt him almost as much as anything else.
“I spoke to Gibson,” she said, her hand on the door, as if she knew she should leave but could not quite bring herself to go. Through all that had happened in the past ten months, she and the Irish surgeon had remained friends. “He told me about Obadiah Slade.” She hesitated. “Please be careful, Sebastian.”
Somehow, he managed to give her a jaunty smile. “I’m always careful.”
“No. You’re not. You’re never careful. That’s what worries me.”
After she had gone, he retrieved his book from the floor. But the words swam before his eyes and he imagined the scent of her lingered still in the room, like a sweet memory just beyond his grasp.
The Reverend Malcolm Earnshaw sank before the high altar of St. Margaret’s, his hands clasped in supplication before him as he let out a low moan.
Beneath his aching knees, the worn stone paving of the aisle felt cold and cruelly hard, but he welcomed the pain as a kind of penance. The jewel-toned stained glass of the soaring windows of the apse before him showed only black against black, while the distant recesses of the church were lost in the gloom of the night. He let his head fall back, his throat working to swallow as he stared up at the intricately carved groins of the ancient vaults above him, alive now with strange, ghostly shadows cast by the flickering flames of the two heavy candles flanking the altar.
He squeezed his eyes shut, his lips moving in a soundless prayer. Oh, Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my lying down and my rising up; thou understandest my thoughts afar off. . . .
It was so difficult to know what to do in such a situation. One shrank from accidentally implicating the innocent, but what if . . . What if the innocent were not truly innocent? How was one to know? Never had Earnshaw felt more in need of guidance and wisdom.
“ ’Thou compassest my path and my lying down,’ ” he whispered, finding solace in speaking the words aloud. “ ‘Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Whither shall I flee from thy presence?’ ”
At some point, the rain had started up again. He could hear it beating on the slate roof above him, and he shivered with the cold and the damp and a quick leap of unaccountable fear.
“ ‘Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God,’ ” he said, his voice rising shrilly. “ ‘Depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.’ ”
From somewhere startlingly near came a soft thump.
The Reverend pushed to his feet, his knees creaking, his breath bunching hot in his throat as he whirled about to peer helplessly into the gloom. “Who’s there?”
His own voice echoed back at him. He swallowed hard, feeling an odd mixture of foolishness and terror. “Is anybody there?”
The urge to bolt toward the west door was strong. But the fat beeswax candles flanking the altar were atrociously dear; he never should have lit them. It had been a foolish extravagance, however spooked he might be.
Bent on extinguishing the flames quickly, he lurched up the step toward the altar, stumbling in his haste. Then he threw another frightened glance toward the nave and whispered, “Oh, my God.”
Chapter 22
SATURDAY, 11 JULY 1812
The next morning, Sebastian drove out toward Prescott Grange, intending to speak to the widow of Sir Nigel Prescott. But when he passed through Tanfield Hill, he found the village green crowded with men fanning out under the direction of the Squire, Douglas Pyle.
“What’s all this?” asked Sebastian, reining in beside him.
“That fool priest,” said the Squire. “He’s gone missing. According to Mrs. Earnshaw, he went out last night, saying he couldn’t remember if he’d locked the sacristy door. Nobody’s seen him since.”
Sebastian glanced over at the ancient church, its heavy sandstone walls looking dark and brooding beneath the cloudy sky. “Did you check the crypt?”
The Squire drew in a deep breath that lifted his broad chest, and blew it out slowly. “Aye, we did. He’s not there, thank God. Although we did find this.” He slipped something from his waistcoat and held it out.